Republicanism in the Book of Mormon

Those who object to finding “republicanism” in the Book of Mormon generally seem to assume that early American republicanism was a monolithic phenomenon—characterized by the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian ideals that dominate the popular modern mythology of America’s founding. This Jeffersonian-Jacksonian tradition was strongly in favor of states’ rights, decentralized government, yeoman farmers, and separation of church and state. The Book of Mormon, it is commonly argued, has its judges act more like kings and theocrats than American (i.e. Jeffersonian) presidents.

While it is true that Jacksonian ideals were in the ascendancy in the late 1820’s and early 30’s, there was another line of American political thought that retained real strength in some parts of the country—especially in New York, where it united with the anti-Masonic furor sparked by the Morgan affair. (Most early converts seem to have been anti-Masons or to have had anti-Masonic sympathies, including most notably Martin Harris and W. W. Phelps.) These old-school conservatives and “Adams-men”, left-over from the recently disintegrated Federalist Party, united into the short-lived “National Republican Party” from 1825-1833. Their platform was strong central government, mingling of church and state, and fear of mob rule. Although they tended to be urban and wealthier than the Jacksonians, they used the same populist rhetoric and—as already mentioned—were strong in Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania where they could unite with populist anti-Masons who saw Jackson as the front man for a Masonic conspiracy to subvert and infiltrate the government for diabolical purposes.[1]

The National Republican/Anti-Masonic platform is closer to what we find in the Book of Mormon than Jacksonianism. It explains the populist and republican rhetoric as well as Jacksonianism would have, but it also accounts for the urban, theocratic, despotic, and anti-Masonic overtones. Thus when Richard Bushman objects that the chief judge “was more king than president”, we may hear echoes of Federalism.[2] And if in the Book of Mormon “church and state are liberally intermixed”, this is hardly out of keeping with the National Republican platform.[3]

Granted, Book of Mormon politics are not merely republican or even primarily republican. The republican elements are lodged in a biblical narrative framework. Like Israel in the Bible, the Nephite leaders are called kings and judges rather than presidents and legislators. The interpretation of the reign of the judges as a government founded on republican principles was commonplace in the 19th century.[4] On the other hand, it was also widely recognized that the reign of the judges also had aristocratic and theocratic features. As one commentator put it, “The Hebrew government, putting out of view its theocratical feature, was of a mixed form, in some respects approaching to a democracy, in others assuming more of an aristocratical character.”[5] Those features of Book of Mormon government that Bushman finds to be non-republican—hereditary succession, the absence of checks and balances, legislation by judges, leadership by inspiration, etc.—are all features of the biblical reign of judges that appear to have been imported into the Book of Mormon narrative.

This however does not negate the fact that the Book of Mormon infuses the biblical system with American, republican overtones, as other 19th century interpreters of the Bible also were wont to do. This has the double effect of both supporting American democracy by giving it a biblical precedent and challenging it by highlighting its unbiblical secularity. It is hardly surprising that the man who wrote the Book of Mormon went on to become both a prophet and a presidential candidate.

So... is there American republicanism in the Book of Mormon? Yes—specifically the Federalist variety espoused by the National Republican Party. But the Book of Mormon is not a republican book, but a biblical book with a republican accent.

NOTES:

[1] Cf. Dan Vogel, "Mormonism's 'Anti-Masonick Bible'," John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 9 (1989): 17-30.

[2] Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 132.

[3] Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 103.

[4] It was also common to refer to the Law of Moses as a “constitution”. See "Sacred Politics," The Republican 2, no. 4 (1825): 134.

[5] Richard Watson, "Government of the Hebrews," in A Biblical and Theological Dictionary: Explanatory of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Jews, and Neighboring Nations (New York: B. Waugh and T. Mason, 1832), 421-22.